


I am a constant satellite

by beamirang



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Groundhog Day, Handwaving of science, Heavy Angst, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 06:56:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18889459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beamirang/pseuds/beamirang
Summary: Alex vanishes from Earth on a Friday.Or, the shamelessly self-indulgent temporary character death groundhog day angst fest.





	I am a constant satellite

**Author's Note:**

> So this would be the shamelessly self-indulgent temporary character death groundhog day angst fest. I offer no explanation other than to say that I had to get it out of my head in order to focus on anything else!
> 
> Please forgive the extreme handwaving of science here! 
> 
> Much love and many thanks to ubiestcaelum and hannah-writes for their encouragement and enablement! <3

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

Alex vanishes from Earth on a Friday. Michael, who hasn’t seen him in nearly three months, is half a bottle of tequila down and elbows deep in the guts of his ship. His parting gift from Alex has completed the console and left him with no shortage of doubt that Alex wants him as far away from him as possible.

He can’t even say he blames him. Micheal isn’t making good life choices. How can he? Max is dead. Isobel’s gone darkside. Maria wants nothing to do with him. Liz is busy with Rosa. Valenti spends most of his time in the hospital keeping Jesse Manes in a coma.

And Alex hates him.

His ship is all he has left. The console is complete, shimmering and thrumming with energy. All he has to do is connect it to a vehicle and he can get the fuck out of dodge.

That part is proving easier said than done.

Oh, building the ship isn’t hard. He’s maybe eighty percent there and he’s got all the parts he needs. No, the issue is convincing his very human combination of repurposed junk to meld with his extremely alien navigational equipment without either exploding, imploding, opening up an inter-dimensional portal or just sparking out on reboot.

Add to the fact that he’s doing all this while living off a diet of RedBull, snack bars and tequila and you’ve got something of a slow process.

Mind you, it’s not like he needs to rush now. His family’s fucking dead. There’s no time limit he’s working towards, just a sense of ‘soon’. Soon, he’ll put this whole fucking planet at his back and lock the past twenty years away in a box.

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

He’d know Alex’s voice anywhere, even after a lifetime apart, but the hatch to the bunker is closed and he doesn’t get a phone signal down here. If this is what he’s become, that drunk who hallucinates and tortures himself with his failures…

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

Leaning forward, he rests a weary hand on the console and braces himself. “I wish I fucking couldn’t,” he grumbles. Even separated, Alex never leaves him in peace. He’s always there. Always poking at the bloody wound that is Michael’s heart.

 _“Guerin! Guerin, is that you?”_ Alex’s voice isn’t coming from the dark places in his head, it’s coming _from_ the console.

“What the fuck? Alex?”

“ _Oh thank god! I thought I was gonna -_ “ he hears Alex take a deep, steadying breath. “ _So I’m in space,”_ he announces.

“Excuse me?”

The laugh that rings around the bunker is slightly hysterical, but it’s Alex, and every part of Michael aches for him. “ _Yeah. Funny story. I was investigating another_ _blacksite_ _-“_

“Alone? What the fuck, Alex?” He knows he and Alex aren’t exactly speaking, but fuck him for thinking Michael doesn’t have a right to know what’s happening with his own damn people. And fuck him again for being so goddamn reckless. What if he’d been hurt? What if something had gone wrong and he’d been…. sent to fucking space, apparently...

“ _I don’t need a lecture right now, Guerin,_ ” Alex says irritably. “ _Investigated_ blacksite _, found spaceship, entered_ _said_ _spaceship_ _,_ _now_ _in actual space.”_

“You've gotta be fucking kidding _,”_ Michael says furiously. Of _course_ Alex takes the one thing Micheal has left and fucks with that as well.

 _“Oh, believe me, not loving it myself. I mean, space is pretty and all, and very cool, but the ship is dead and I’m mildly freaking out.”_ He doesn’t sound like he’s freaking out. He sounds perfectly calm. He’s always been fucked up like that.

Still, calm or not, the words kick Michael out of his spiral of anger. “What do you mean the ship is dead?”

_“I mean, no power. No lights. No life support. Nothing. I’m stranded.”_

Just like that, it all stops being some epic cosmic joke. If Alex is right…

“How are you talking to me?” Michael asks, scrambling for a pen and paper to scribble notes as Alex speaks.

_“The console? I think? It glows faintly when I touch it. It’s like yours, or it was. As soon as the ship stopped, it went dull. This is all I’ve really been able to get it to do.”_

Michael drags his hand over his face. If the life-support is down, Alex doesn’t have long. If the cold doesn’t kill him, the lack of oxygen will.

The universe is never going to let them be, is it? Every time they think they’ve managed to get away from each other, it pulls something like this. How much must Alex be hating that Michael is the one he’s made contact with?

“Look, I’m close to finishing up my ship. I’m coming to get you.” He’s probably weeks of sporadic work away, but he knows Alex only has days, if not hours. When he says nothing, Michael hits the console with his palm, afraid that they’ve lost the connection. “Alex?”

“ _It’s too dangerous,”_ Alex says.

“I’m leaving the planet one way or another,” Michael snaps. “So I come and get you before I go. Big fucking deal.”

“ _I know… I know you're leaving, I-_ ” Alex says softly. “ _I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”_

Space? Them? Everything in between? “Yeah. I know. Look, just keep warm, and don’t do anything too acrobatic. I’m coming.”

He doesn’t hear from Alex in the six hours that follow. By that point, Michael has muddled something close to ninety percent of the ship together and has moved on to the compatibility issue. He’s got a fuel source, he’s rigged up life support, he even has an engine, but fuck if he has a way to make them all work in sync.

 _“It’s beautiful,_ ” Alex’s voice speaks wistfully over the connection, breaking the silence. “ _I wish you could see it._ ”

“I’m going to,” Michael stops what he’s doing and responds.

Alex replies with only an indistinct hum of agreement, and the channel goes quiet again.

Another twelve hours pass and Michael is starting to panic. He checks in with Alex every hour, each time trying to get a read on how he’s holding up. It’s hard. Alex has always been so good at keeping people out, and the one guaranteed way of knocking those barriers down is denied to them. If Alex were here, Michael could hold him and know exactly how bad it is. Instead, he can only guess and hope and work fucking harder.

He passes out after twenty-six hours, his eyeballs feeling like they’re bleeding and his head pounding. When he wakes, a whole hour has passed. Alex has been up there over a day, and he doesn’t respond immediately when Michael frantically calls his name.

“ _I’m here_ ,” he says eventually. He sounds as tired as Michael feels.

Michael’s knees hit the ground, weak from sheer relief. “Thank god. How are you holding up?”

“ _It’s cold,_ ” Alex says, and a responding tendril of fear creeps its way up Michael’s spine.

He’s not once, not for a second, believed that Alex is going to _die_. He can’t. He doesn’t get to do that. He doesn’t get to leave. “Just hold on,” Michael says desperately. “I’m close. I’m so close.”

“ _You sound tired_ ,” Alex says.

Michael furiously wipes the sting of tears from his eyes. “I’m fine.”

 _“Don’t,_ ” Alex says, gentle now, that same kindness in his voice that drew Michael in so many years ago. “ _Don’t kill yourself for this.”_

“I’m not. I’m gonna make it. I am.” He’s close now. So damn close.

Alex isn’t done. “ _You don’t have to, is what I mean,_ ” he says. “ _I’m not your responsibility.”_

“The fuck you aren’t,” Micheal snaps. Maybe if he flips the poles? Tries to reverse the atomic processors? “Just. Shut up and rest, okay?”

“ _Okay_ ,” Alex says. “ _It’s beautiful up here. I wish you could see it.”_ That soft, wistful confusion is the closest indicator of how he's holding up Michael will get. Not good, is the answer. 

“I’m going to,” Michael says. This time it’s prayer more than proclamation. Please, _please_ let this work.

Another four hours pass, then Alex speaks again, casually ripping Michael’s heart out while he tries to program a language he doesn’t speak into a console that doesn’t understand him.

“ _I should’ve listened to you_ ,” Alex says, his voice a far away whisper. “ _You told me._ ”

“Told you what?” It’s hard to focus on his voice and the task at hand, but he can’t stomach the idea of Alex being alone right now.

_“That you don’t love me.”_

A punch to the gut would hurt less. “Alex-“

“ _You told me. I should’ve listened. I’m sorry I didn’t._ ”

“You said I was a miserable liar,” Michael chokes, remembering all too clearly the tears on Alex’s face after he said those words.

“ _I wanted to believe you were. I wanted to believe you loved me_ like _I love you._ ” If the honesty in his voice doesn’t kill Michael, the wistfulness almost certainly will.

He’s too late. He knows. He _knows_. He can feel it, that hook beneath his ribs that tugs whenever he thinks of Alex is loosening. He’s too late. “Alex, no, no, you gotta-“

_“I’m glad you’re here. I’m sorry if that’s selfish… actually no. I’m not sorry.”_

“I’m not sorry either,” Michael whispers. “Not for that. Alex, if I don’t-“

 _“Will you do something for me_?”

“Anything,” Michael swears.

“ _Lie to me,_ ” Alex asks him. _“Tell me you didn’t look away.”_

Michael puts his head in his hands and sobs. Of all the things Alex could’ve asked him, he’s asked the one thing Michael does have to lie about. It might only have been a moment, it might’ve been born of pain and trauma, but he did. He looked away.

Why couldn’t Alex’ve asked if he loved him? Why couldn’t he have asked for something Michael could give him that wouldn’t break them both?

 _“It’s okay,_ ” Alex says soothingly. “ _It’s okay. It’s gonna be fine, Michael. You’re gonna be fine._ ”

After that, silence.

He’s resting. That’s all. Conserving his strength. He’s resting.

Michael finishes the ship three hours later, but climbing inside isn’t the escape he’s hoped for. It’s not the promise of a new life and a new start, of answers and excitement. It feels like he’s climbing into a coffin.

He has no idea how to even start trying to find Alex, but the console hums and vibrates under his hand, knowing without being told exactly where he needs to be.

He was going to put Earth behind him and never look back. He doesn’t, but not for the reason he thought. All there is left is what waits for him in the black. All there is left is Alex.

They reach their destination in barely an hour, hopping and skipping through clusters of stars. Alex’s is right: it _is_ beautiful.

The ship is, too. It connects with Michael’s small craft with the same seamless melding that the console did on repair, recognizing a part of itself, even one so bastardized. It lets the pressure equalize and the precious oxygen Michael is carrying with him flood the main ship, and it opens up under his command without hesitation despite so many years separating it from one of its own kind.

He finds Alex under the stars.

The viewing window is large, offering unrestricted access to the vast beauty of space.

He knows, even as he approaches, that Alex is gone. He’s too still, too pale, and Michael is too late.

“Please,” he begs, touching a finger to Alex’s froze cheek. “Please, Alex, you gotta wake up.” It’s awkward, trying to take him into his arms. He’s heavier in death, his limbs uncooperative and stiff. He looks peaceful though. Like maybe death didn’t hurt. “Come on, darlin’,” Michael pleads, trying to hook one of Alex’s arms around his neck and sobbing when it falls limp against his chest. “You said you were done walking away! You said you’d wait for me!”

Alex doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t fucking answer. When has he ever said what Michael needed to hear when he was ready to hear it?

“You don’t get to do this! Fuck you, Alex, you don’t get to leave!”

Alex’s head falls back when Michael shakes him, awkward and painful looking. Suddenly Michael can’t see through his tears, distraught and trying to stroke his hair, trying to soothe a hurt that can’t be felt. “I’m sorry,” he chokes, “I didn’t mean too. I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ …”

Max is dead, but if Max were here, he could bring Alex back. He had the power of gods. He could heal. What can Michael do? Move things with his mind?

What fucking use is that?

Only… only _how_ does he move them? How did Max heal? He manipulated electromagnetic pulses, yes, but more than that, he manipulated molecules.

Michel manipulates atoms.

And atoms make up everything. Space. The Universe. Time.

That’s all he needs. Time. He was only a few hours late, and he knows what needs to be done. If he had more time…

He tucks Alex carefully against his chest and throws his power out into the world. Immediately, it tries to resist him. _Wrong_ , it screams. _Wrong! Wrongwrongwrong_ …

Fuck the universe, fuck their laws, and fuck the gods.

If there’s a price, let him pay it. The universe can have everything. They can have his pain, his blood, his life even.

But they can’t have Alex.

 

* * *

 

Michael throws himself across his bunker and promptly throws up the contents of his stomach. It’s mostly tequila, and the time he spends retching gives his brain a moment to try and piece itself together from the mush it’s become.

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

“Holy fucking shit,” Michael breathes. “Holy _shit_!” He stumbles to the console and presses his palm against the smooth surface. “Alex? Can you hear me?”

“ _Guerin_!”

Michael bursts into tears. “I can hear you,” he says, trying to disguise his sobs of relief.

 _“Oh thank god! I thought I was gonna -_ “ he hears Alex take a deep, steadying breath. “ _So I’m in space,_ ” he announces.

“I know,” he says.

 _“You do?”_ He’s pretty sure that’s not the answer Alex was expecting.

Michael is already moving around the console. “I do. I’m coming to get you.”

Alex’s sigh of relief echos around the bunker. _“Thank fuck for that. Space is pretty and all, but this ship is dead in the water. We’ve got nothing, no life support, no heating. I’m pretty sure this console is only hanging on out of stubbornness.”_

“I know. I know, I’m gonna get you back, okay? I promise.”

He can’t lose Alex again. Never again. He’s been given another chance, he’s not going to fuck it up.

 _“Should I ask how you know all this?_ ” Alex sounds too amused to be anything but relieved.

“Freaky alien superpowers,” Michael says by way of an answer. “But look. I love you. We need to talk. About a lot of shit. But I love you. I have always loved you. Nothing will change that, nothing ever could.” It’s probably not the most romantic declaration of love in the history books, but Michael can’t let Alex think for one second that the sun doesn’t rise and set and rise again purely because Michael loves him.

 _“Christ,”_ Alex breathes out shakily. “ _I’m gonna die, aren’t I?”_

“No,” Michael says furiously. “Sit tight. I’m coming.”

He shaves off five hours of construction time, but there’s no rushing the fusion of alien and human tech. They seem to want to take their sweet fucking time getting to know one another and no amount of prodding and poking can speed the process up.

“Just hold on,” Michael begs through his tears. “Please, Alex, just hold on a little longer. Wait for me.”

“ _Always_ ,” Alex promises.

Michael arrives on the ship three hours too late.

 

* * *

 

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

“Fuck!” It takes Michael ten minutes before he stops puking before he can summon a scream of frustration, but it hangs in the air, reverberating around the bunker with a sickening finality. “I’m coming,” he barks into the console. “Don’t fucking die.”

“ _I... wasn’t planning on it?_ ” Alex says. “ _Is that you, Guerin?”_

“Your favorite alien, here to save the day.” The words feel like some kind of cosmic joke, burning with acidic bitterness as he speaks them. “Don’t ask any questions. Don’t do anything. Just. Sit. Quietly. I got this.”

He needs to bypass the console’s inbuilt defense mechanisms and force it to fuse with the ship manually. It’ll be more unstable, but the time it saves will be worth the risk.

“ _Great. That’s… I’ll just. Sit. With my thumbs_ up _my ass._ ”

He’s still breathing when Michael finishes the ship.

He’s still breathing when the hull cracks upon leaving the atmosphere, leaving Michael bobbing like a fucking apple in a barrel, the Earth beautiful and blue beneath him.

Bullshit. This is _bullshit_.

 

* * *

 

The eighth time Michael goes back, he wakes up vomiting blood, the heart-wrenching familiarity of Alex’s call a soundtrack to the screaming agony of Michael’s whole body rebelling against the violence he’s inflicting on himself.

By the time he’s done coughing up blood and wiped away the tears that stream down his face, he’s barely able to climb to his feet. This isn’t sustainable. He can’t keep this up for much longer. One day soon, he’s going to send himself back, and he won’t wake up on the other side.

Any chance of deluding himself into believing he has infinite chances of getting this right fades in the sight of his pale, trembling hands. He’s running out of time. He’s been too late four fucking times. He’s broken down and been stranded twice. He’s been shot down by the fucking Air Force once, and if that’s not a bitter fucking twist of fate…

“ _Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?_ ”

He reaches for the console instinctively. Then stops. How much faster will he be if he doesn’t waste time talking to Alex? Hours faster. Hours are all he needs. He’s been getting closer and closer each time.

He hardens his heart and lets the call go unanswered.

He works faster. Works harder. He’s forgotten what real food tastes like, fueled by RedBull and snack bars. He allows himself an hour of sleep every twelve, unwilling to make another foolish mistake out of exhaustion.

Alex’s call continues. Every five minutes at first. Then every twenty. Every thirty. Every hour. “ _Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?_ ” He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t rant or scream or ramble. He stays calm. Collected. That military training strong throughout. If his voice starts to wobble after twenty hours, weak and weary, it’s only in Michael’s head. It has to be.

It kills him to listen. To push past the idea of how terrified, how lonely Alex must be right now. I _t’ll be worth it_ , he tells himself. _This time I’m going to save him_.

The timer ticks. Twelve hours left.

Alex continues to make the call. His voice is weaker every time.

Ten hours. “ _I know no one is listening,”_ Alex’s voice announces instead of his usual call. “ _I know-_ “ he chokes on a sob, and Michael freezes, two wires clamped between his fingers. Alex has never cried. Not once. He’s always been so strong -

Strong for Michael.

He tries to connect the wires and misses, his vision wet and blurry. He’s so close. So fucking close.

“ _I don’t want to die._ ”

Michael sobs.

“ _I have to tell him,_ ” Alex chokes, his voice a lightyear whisper away. “ _He has to know. He has to know he’s everything. He has to know I’m sorry. I’m so sorry_.”

“Alex!” He can’t do it. He can’t let Alex die thinking he’s alone. “Alex!”

He gets no answer and understanding hits him with the same devastating force as a hammer. Alex hasn’t been sleeping. He’s been staying away to send those messages hour after hour after hour. His respiratory process hasn’t slowed in slumber. The effort put into his calls to the void has burned through life support far faster than they have in the past.

Michael tried to save him, and he made it worse. He always makes it worse.

Eight hours. He’s saved eight hours, and when he makes it to Alex’s side it’s to a sight that makes all previous heartbreaks seem gentle.

Alex hasn’t passed peacefully. He’s not laid out like something from a dream just waiting for Michael’s kiss to bring him back to life. He’s crumpled, curled tightly at the base of the console, his arms wrapped around himself for comfort and tears frozen on his cheeks.

The fragile, flickering flame of hope that burns in his heart stutters and dies at the cold frigidity of Alex’s skin.

The alarm on his wrist starts to beep. He made it in time, and time has betrayed them both.

He thinks that this time is the last. Alex is stiff in his arms, a frozen statute dedicated to Michael’s failures, and maybe this is where he is supposed to die, clutching an ethereal specter of the man he loves.

But Alex died alone. He died scared.

One more time.

 

* * *

 

The blood is thicker this time. Darker. The likelihood of him actually puking up his internal organs is low, but it feels like he must be. He’s known pain before, intimately, but not sickness, and this is a misery that leaves him capable of only one thought: find Alex, curl up in his lap, fucking weep.

 _“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?_ ”

He’s still coughing blood when he answers. “Alex!” The word shatters in his soul and scatters stardust parts of him into the abyss, drawn to Alex in an inescapable pull of gravity.

“ _Guerin! Are you okay?”_

Alex is stranded on a spaceship, dead in the water and lost in an ocean of stars, and that’s his first question. Michael must sound as bad as he feels.

He spits. Wipes away the blood. “I’m okay, listen-“

“ _I think I’m in space,_ ” Alex blurts. “ _I can’t explain it, but I need you to believe-“_

“I love you,” Michael says quickly, already scrambling around the console. “I love you. And I’m coming to get you.” Alex is silent for entirely too long and Michael panics, picturing a million different ways Alex might die from explosions to fucking space pirates. “Alex? Alex!”

“ _I’m here,”_ Alex says softly. “ _Please don’t say that.”_

“Say what?” He can put the last pieces of the console into place without paying much thought to the arrangement. He does things by route, rushed and reckless.

Alex voice is smaller than he’s ever heard it. “ _That you love me,_ ” he says, breaking on that one tremulous word. “ _Makes me think I’m gonna die_.” That part is said with forced humor and he can picture the sad little smile that accompanies it.

Five times. He’s held Alex’s body in his arms five fucking times He's died eight times. “You’re not going to die,” he says harshly. “I do fucking love you, and I need you to do what I tell you.” Alex says nothing. “Alex!”

“ _What do you need me to do?_ ”

“Trust me. I’m coming to get you. And I’m gonna make it on time, I swear, but you need to use as little energy as possible. Sleep, okay, sleep as much as you can.”

“ _Guerin_ -“

“Please.”

“ _Okay_.”

That promise buoys Michael on. He forgoes sleep entirely, necking can after can of energy drink in between rushed calculations.

This time, he makes it with three hours to spare, the fastest he’s ever been. Alex is laid out peacefully on the ground below the console, a backdrop of pinks and purples and blues, a nebula watching over him as he sleeps.

Michael wakes him with a kiss.

His reward is a beatific smile, dazzling and full of love. “You came.” He’s cold, but not frozen, lethargic, but still conscious, his heartbeat a chorus of joy under Michael’s fingers.

“I’ll always come for you,” he vows, a promise seared with his blood into the fabric of the universe itself. “Let’s go home.”

He carries Alex to the shuttle and lets him rest, trusting and peaceful, while he works the console.

The smooth glass, once flickering with iridescent light, alive and responsive to his touch, is dull and dead. It, like the ship he’s just rescued Alex from, has been capable of just the one trip. Destination reached, the life it has clung to for seventy fraught years is spent.

He sits back in the pilot's chair and waits for the rage to hit him.

Alex’s fingers curl slowly over his arm before it ever has a chance. “It’s okay,” he says. “Michael, it’s okay.”

“I wanted to save you,” he says brokenly.

Alex smiles sadly. “I never wanted you to die for me. That’s the last thing I wanted.”

He carries Alex back into the main ship and settles them both beneath the vast beauty of space. Here or the shuttle, it doesn’t really matter.

They’ve got three hours.

Alex curls into his warmth, clinging to Michael as his body fights increasingly violent shivers. Michael’s never been this cold, never known the cold could even hurt this much, but here he is. Here they both are.

“I meant it,” he says, his lips against Alex’s hair. “I love you.”

“And look where that’s gotten you,” Alex says bitterly.

“You think there’s anywhere I’d rather be right now?” He doesn’t know when he’s started rocking them back and forward, but it’s soothing. “Maybe we were always supposed to go like this?”

“Freezing our balls off while we suffocate in space?” Alex snorts. “Romeo and Juliet, eat your hearts out.”

The term star-crossed seems a little on the nose, but they’re hardly in a place to argue it. “Together. You would’ve stayed for me in Caulfield, right?”

“You know I would’ve,” Alex says.

Maybe because they are together, because he has Alex in his arms and can hold him as his breathing slows, words have less importance. Alex has no desperate need to apologize, to assure Michael that he’s loved and always will be. He knows, perhaps for the very first time, that Michael understands. The guilt and apology and anger that are always on the tip of Michael’s tongue have equally little place. They’re together, as peaceful as they have been in ten years, and they’re unafraid.

Maybe that’s what Michael has been trying to do? Not save Alex, but die with him. There’s no place on earth or in space that he can occupy with the gaping absence of Alex in his heart, so why even try?

“I’m glad you’re here,” Alex says. “I wish I wasn’t, but I am.”

Michael can hardly feel his fingers as he runs them through Alex’s hair. This’ll be the last time he gets to marvel at its softness and so he savors it. “Me too, darlin', me too.”

Michael’s whole concept of life was born in space. It’s fitting he’ll die here. Maybe it’s even fitting that Alex dies here too? The human who reached out and touched the stars, who lit a fire in the universe that death can never extinguish.

“Can you-“ Alex takes Michael’s hand and slides it into his shirt, wriggling until skin touches skin. “I want to feel you. Liz said…” he trails off, a blush rising blue on his cheeks.

Michael’s never done this with anyone but he doesn’t hesitate now. He presses his hand over Alex’s heart and reaches out with his mind until he finds the cluster of flickering brightness that is Alex’s consciousness. It’s as wild and beautiful as Michael has imagined, order and chaos intermingling with the colorful essence of Alex’s soul, golden sands entwined with peaceful blue waters.

He knows Alex is seeing in Michael all the wonders Michael is seeing in him, but all he knows, all he can focus on, is the white-hot pulse of love that flows between them.

Alex doesn’t just love Michael. He loves Michael the way Michael loves him.

It’s all-consuming. Reckless. Destructive. Great, beautiful and terrible.

“You’re so beautiful,” Alex breathes as the word echos in his own mind.

Michael’s answer is in the brush of his lips, words too incomplete to convey the weight of what he feels. Connected, kissing Alex feels the same as being kissed by Alex, the loop between them infinite and pure. Alex’s love is his love, his pleasure Michael’s pleasure.

When he dies, the beautiful brightness of his soul is wrenched from Michael’s arms, abandoning him to the cold loneliness of a world without his other half.

He brushes his thumb gently over Alex’s eyes closing them forever with a fractured kiss. “It’s okay,” he says, tears falling without care or concern. “I’ll be right behind you.”

 

* * *

 

_“Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”_

Michael wakes up in a puddle of vomit and blood, a scream dragging raw across his throat. “No!” He throws out his power, trying to bring the devastation in his heart to physical manifestation and manages only to whimper and tremble. He’s done. He’s got nothing left to give.

He was supposed to die with Alex. He was content. He was as close to fucking happy as he’s ever been in his stupid, miserable life.

So why is he here? Why did he come back?

“ _Is there anyone there? Can anyone hear me?_ ”

He has to crawl to reach the console. “Alex…” Never before has Alex’s name felt so heavy on his tongue.

“ _Guerin! Guerin, is that you?_ ”

“Yeah,” Michael answers, too broken to cry. “I’m here.”

He can’t do this.

 _“Okay so don’t freak out, but I’m in space, and there is a sparkly handprint on my chest._ ”

Michael thinks of every time they have had this conversation and wonders if he will ever find a way to break the cycle.

The powers of gods are not for mere mortals. For all he knows, this is punishment for his hubris. Noah seemed to think their kind were looked on as gods by the humans of the past. Maybe they were. Maybe this is Tartarus. Maybe Alex dying over and over is his rock and his failure is the mountain he must push it up.

Wait. “Sparkly handprint?”

“ _And space_ ,” Alex sounds slightly hysterical. _“Let's not forget the space part_.”

Michael reaches out for Alex’s mind, and he finds him. He’s still there. They are still connected. Lilac blossoms of surprise bloom in the landscape of Alex’s mind, tendrils of curious periwinkle reaching out to touch and explore.

“The console,” Michael blurts, reaching out to touch the one in front of him. “Yours. It’s dead, right?”

“ _I”d say very_ ,” Alex answers.

“Do you trust me?” Michael asks. He knows what to do. He _knows_! “Alex, do you trust me?”

“ _I trust you, Guerin_ ,” Alex says simply.

“Put your hands on the console, and don’t fight what I’m about to do.” He reaches out again, sinks into the warmth of Alex’s mind, and takes control.

He’s not Isobel, he has no strength when it comes to overpowering a resistant mind, but Alex lays himself wide open for Michael’s touch, as vulnerable as he has ever been. Michael can feel his hands on the dead console as clearly as he can feel his own hands against living organic power.

He’s always thought of the console as something alive. The way the shattered, broken parts of it knitted together on contact has always been too close to a biological certainty for Michael to ever rule out the possibility of it being as much a living entity as himself.

The pieces want to be together, he said.

He and Alex want to be together.

The consoles want to be together, too.

Life races through his fingers, into his mind and down the synapses in space that contest Alex’s consciousness with his own. He can feel the thrill of power racing down his spine, raising the hairs on the back of his neck and making his toes curl. He can feel Alex experience the same thing.

Across the fathoms of space, stranded but no longer alone, the console under Alex’s hands flares to life.

There’s enough power for one trip. One destination.

That’s all they need.

He’s not sure if Alex’s mind slips from his, or if his slips from Alex’s. He drops to his knees and falls into the darkness that forms between them, and prays to a higher power that it’s enough.

 

* * *

 

He wakes to a crash that shakes the very foundations of the earth. His bunker and all the delicate, precious things inside it tremble with such violent force the glass light bulbs shatter and shelves upend their contents. Michael’s body, sprawled out face first on the ground, is thrown into the air and the impact of his return to earth shakes the exhausted fugue from his mind.

 _Alex_.

He claws forwards, pushing himself painfully to his knees, and scrambles for the ladder.

His trailer is still there. Most of the auto yard is not.

In its place is a medium sized spaceship, nose deep in the ground, and Alex, stumbling blearily from the wreckage.

“Okay so flying that thing is nothing like Star Wars Battlefield,” Alex cringes as he surveys the damage.

“You’re okay,” Michael says dumbly. He’s okay, and his skin isn’t blue. He’s not weak from starvation and dehydration and oxygen deprivation. He’s not even grown much of a five o’clock stubble.

“I’m okay,” Alex nods, wide-eyed. “You look like shit, Guerin.”

Michael decides to protest his statement by keeling over. This time, he’s the one being taken into strong arms, he’s the one being pulled against a firm chest, and he’s the one finding equilibrium in the sweet, natural coolness of Alex’s skin against his own raging fever.

“I got you,” Alex promises, holding him close with one arm and helping Michael press his palm to the glowing print over his heart with the other. “I got you. You can feel me, right? I’m here. You did it. You saved me.”

Michael doesn’t need to hear it in the words Alex does say. He can feel it pulsing between them. Every moment lived and relived. Every death. Every failure. Every heartbreak. Alex knows because Michael can never forget.

And Michael, who wants to say ‘ _I love you, I’ll always love you, please never leave me again_ ,’ says, “You crashed a fucking spaceship on my yard.”

“I might be an airman, Guerin, but I’m not a pilot,” Alex says prissily. “That thing was not user-friendly.”

“It brought you home,” Michael says weakly. Now he’s in Alex’s arms, he doesn’t think he’ll ever have the strength to leave them.

He feels the brush of cool lips against his forehead, bringing the same blissful relief of icy water on a scalding hot day. “It did,” Alex agreed. When he cups Michael’s face in his hand, thumb brushing across the blood smeared over his skin, he sighs sadly. “What am I going to do with you, huh?”

Even bitter and angry and hurting Michael would’ve responded to that with a cheap flirtation. Now he presses himself as close to Alex as his body will allow and lets the warm thread that hangs like gossamer between them be the anchor he has to the world.

“Stay?” Michael begs.

Alex tucks his head under his chin and hums, the sound of home reverberating in his chest. “Always.”

 


End file.
